Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Final Recyclemania Tallies In

In the end, the northwest corner of Rose Hill was the greenest of them all.

When the final numbers of Recyclemania, which ended on April 1, were released, the residents of Salice-Conley Hall, Martyr's Court and Alumni South came out ahead of all other residence halls in the categories of most glass, metal and plastic, most paper and cardboard, and least trash, respectively.

The three residence halls are clumped together in the northwest corner of the Rose Hill campus. In the third annual, six-week long Recyclemania challenge, Salice-Conley Hall beat out the competition by recycling 6.09 pounds of glass, metal and plastic per person, beating Martyr's Court's second place finish of 5.37 pounds per person. Both bested Alumni South, which recycled a measly 2.47 pounds per person.

For paper and cardboard, the situation was reversed, as Martyr's Court's 6.57 pounds per person beat Salice-Conley's 5.88 pounds per person. Alumni South again was near the bottom of this category, with 2.87 pounds per person. Only Lincoln Center's McMahon Hall recycled less paper and cardboard, 2.77 pounds per person.

On the bright side, Alumni South generated the least amount of trash of any residence hall on the Rose Hill campus, 24.91 pounds per person, just squeaking by Loschert Hall's 24.94 pounds per person. McMahon Hall maintained its traditional lead in this category, with just 15.61 pounds per person.

Perhaps owing to its status as one of the largest residence halls on the Rose Hill campus, Martyr's Court also managed to also generate far and away the most trash, a whopping 48.62 pounds per person. The next closest was O'Hare Hall, on the other side of campus, where residents generated 40.38 pounds per person. Nothing, it seems, is done on a small scale at the court, which is named for the Jesuit martyrs Isaac Jogues, John LaLande, and Rene Goupil.

As with the past two years, Fordham participated in the "benchmark" division of the competition, and as such, was not ranked against other universities. According to statistics compiled by Great Forest, the University's residence halls generated 7.043 pounds of recyclables per capita
and had a nearly 20% recycling rate, up from last year's 18.86%.

According to Recyclemania, that translates into 87 metric tons of CO2 Equivalent, or 17 cars off the road, or the energy consumption of eight households.